Gradius II (Vulcan Venture)

48K plays 1988 #Action#Shooter

Gradius II, retitled Vulcan Venture in North American arcades, is a 1988 horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Konami. It is the sequel to Gradius and was succeeded by Gradius III. Initially released in arcades, ports of Gradius II were released for the Family Computer (under the shortened title of Gradius II), PC Engine Super CD-ROM², and the X68000 in Japan. The original arcade version is also included in the Gradius Deluxe Pack compilation for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn and in Gradius Collection for the PlayStation Portable.

From Wikipedia's article Gradius II, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Keyboard controls

NESPlayer 1Player 2
D-pad↑↓←→IKJL
BZN
AXM
SelectShiftB
StartEnterSpace

Hotkeys

  • 1 Quick save state
  • 2 Quick load state
  • 3 Change save slot

Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Keyboard controls

NESPlayer 1Player 2
D-pad↑↓←→IKJL
BZN
AXM
SelectShiftB
StartEnterSpace

Hotkeys

  • 1 Quick save state
  • 2 Quick load state
  • 3 Change save slot

Gamepads are detected when you press a button. Remap any key from the emulator’s Controls menu (gear icon).

Emulator help & troubleshooting

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Pixel Verdict

Gradius II (Vulcan Venture)NES

3.5 Good job

Players 79 · 144 votes

No critic scores found for this game: this is the players' rating.

What the reviews talk about

What the critics said

  • IGN gave the Virtual Console release of the PC Engine version an 8 out of 10, praising the ability to choose which power-ups the player character has access to before entering a stage and the inclusion of useful cheat codes "to offset the otherwise potentially overwhelming difficulty".

    — IGN, 2008· about another version

From the Reception section of Wikipedia's Gradius II article, under CC BY-SA 4.0. The words are the critics'; their full reviews are on the publishers' pages.

Full reviews

Face key

  1. 1.00+
  2. 1.540+
  3. 2.050+
  4. 2.560+
  5. 3.068+
  6. 3.575+
  7. 4.080+
  8. 4.585+
  9. 5.090+

5.0 Outstanding! · 4.0 Great job! · 3.0 Good job · 2.0 Could be better · 1.0 Wake me up when it's over · A thumbs-up adds half a point. Our own drawings, in the spirit of the faces GamePro magazine used in the '90s.

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